Sunday, 14 April 2013

You thought you had escaped HEAD GAMES because I haven’t
mentioned it for a few days. Well, I’m baaack, but this time with the actual
story.

The time: 1979. Jim Brooks, an architect on assignment in
Argentina, has arrived in Toronto to report to head office.

The setting: a bar frequented by Latinos, where Jim meets
up with Don Baker, an ex-colleague. Don is a great story-teller -- a bit of a
bullshitter maybe, but always entertaining.

Jim spotted Don at a table in the back. He hadn’t changed
much, same big gut, same stiff neck, and a face running to lard.

They shook hands.

“So, how’s the project going?” Don asked.

“Alright,” Jim said. “Except for the usual problems. The
corruption, the demands of the military junta, the red tape.”

Don sipped his drink,
listening to Jim with an air of distraction. He kept scanning the people at the
bar and looking at the door as if he was expecting someone.

I’m boring him, Jim thought. He changed tack and asked
Don about his new career [real estate]. The question kindled a half-light in
Don’s eyes. He broke out the real estate anecdotes, a few warm-up jokes, then
something with a little more jangle, but sadly below the old standard. Not even
close. No fireworks, no exploding laughter.

“Last year I listed a
property a couple of blocks from here,” Don said, “a three-story Victorian with
a shop on the main floor and two flats upstairs. They laughed at the office
when I brought in the listing. Nobody is going to buy that dump, they said. The
owner lived on the second floor, with a dozen cats. Her bedroom was a feeding
station.Litter boxes and cat food
everywhere.The tenant on the third
floor was a wino. The place smelled of piss. Next thing you know: the cat lady
has a heart attack and ends up in hospital. The Humane Society carts away her
pets. I visit the old woman in hospital and make her a bedside offer: I buy the
house myself. Let me tell you, Jim, she was glad to get rid of it. It was
nothing but a headache for her.”

“And so you bought
the place? That was charitable of you.”

Don drained his
Scotch. “Wait till you hear the rest,” he said, signaling the waiter for a
refill -- his second refill. He was on a roll now. “So I get a new tenant for
the shop and start renovating the old lady’s apartment. I slap paint on the
walls and have the floors sanded and refinished. The wino comes padding down
from the third floor to see what’s going on. ‘How’s life at the top?’ I
say.He breathes alcoholic fumes on me.
‘Crappy,’ he says. ‘The whole city is crappy.A shit place to live in. You pass out on the sidewalk, and people step
right over you, like you’re a dog. Where I come from, they don’t treat you like
that.’ He was from Sudbury, he told me.‘So why did you leave?’ I said. ‘Got fired from Inco,’ he said. ‘It’s a
company town. You work for Inco, or you don’t work. I should’ve stayed up north
and gone tree planting.’ So I make him an offer. ‘You want to go back to
Sudbury, Frank?’ I say. ‘Sure,’ he says, and starts reminiscing about family,
classmates, neighbours. He goes all weepy on me. ‘Jees,’ he says, ‘we had a
ball of a time. Jees, I wish I could go back there now.’ So I say: ‘Tell you
what, Frank, I’ll buy you a ticket to Sudbury.’I drive him to the bus terminal. I give him some pocket money and bundle
him on the bus."

Don leaned back with
a mission-accomplished grin. “So everybody’s happy. I go back and tell the crew
to paint the upstairs as well. A month later I sell the house at a profit.”

“Good for you,” Jim
said obligingly. He noticed that he was humouring Don. Something had happened
to the familiar landscape, a tectonic shift. The gap in their ages had widened.
It was no longer the difference between thirty and fifty. It was something
larger and unbridgeable. Don had turned into an old man, to be humoured…

The conversation
dried up.

Don was cradling his empty glass and staring into space.
The alcohol had started to immobilize him. His head looked like a piece of meat
in cold storage. Suddenly something – the door opening, a draft of air—caught
his attention. He sat up and looked past Jim, smiling.

Jim turned and saw
that he had his eyes on a Latina. She waved at Don and made her way to their
table, doing a kind of cha-cha, mouthing the lyrics to a pop song, snapping her
fingers as if she wanted to wake up the whole place. She had Don’s attention at
any rate.

“Lisa,” he said when
she arrived at their table. “You are late today.”

“There was a sale on
at the Botanica,” she said. “I went in and talked to Santos.”

Don’s face dropped.
“Santos? What’s he selling? Snake oil?”

Lisa patted his
shoulders and said in a purry voice: “You’re in a bad mood, Don. Want me to go
away?”

“No, I don’t want you
to go away,” Don said, and his body went into a praying curve. “Sit down. Have
a drink.” He patted the empty chair beside him.

Lisa sat down,
letting her denim skirt ride up and flashing her pink tube top at Don. “Okay,”
she said. “I’ll have a beer.” …

[Don does the introductions and rolls out a carpet of
South American anecdotes for Lisa.]

“Lisa’s parents are
from Argentina,” he said. It was as if he had pressed a button at the back of
Lisa’s head. She opened her mouth and spilled the family history, pouring out a
river of words, as if she had always wanted to tell them and had just waited
for Don to give the signal and open the flood gates. She was a natural
storyteller like Don, although she couldn’t match his scope. She kept to one
topic, went at it from different angles, but all points of departure led to the
same dark corner: Her mother had an affair in Argentina and got pregnant. There
was a shotgun wedding to another man who believed the child was his, who still
thought he was Lisa’s father.

“But one of these
days I’ll go to Argentina and look up my real father,” she said, coming to the
end of her story. “His name is Miguel Soriano.” She mouthed the name with
gusto, as if she couldn’t wait to make him part of her family saga. She stopped
and looked at them expectantly, waiting for their reaction.

“That’s quite a
story,” Don said. He was ready to believe in Lisa’s rogue father, but Jim had
reservations. She laughed too much when she told the story.

[Lisa is the
character for whom I named my novel HEAD GAMES. She has plenty of scenes
playing in her head, but is unsure what role to play. Not to worry: Don already
has her slotted for a part.]

After she’d left, Don
said: “So what do you think of Lisa?”

“A little too intense
for my taste,” Jim said. He put resistance into his voice, the kind of
resistance he meant to put up against Lisa’s fatal attractions.

Don nodded, holding
on to his empty glass, gathering strength for one last anecdote, one for the
road. “She comes in here practically every day and chats up people. She has a
tremendous need to vent. No one takes her seriously. They all think she’s a
little crazy. But I worry about Lisa, you know. She reminds me of my daughter,
Asu.”

Don had never
mentioned a daughter before.

“You have a daughter?”
Jim said.

“I adopted her.” Don shifted and
stirred in his chair. “She was an orphan, but her grandfather treated her like
chattel. If I wanted her, he said, I had to pay him compensation. That was his
view of the matter. I had to buy her off the old man.”

Don’s voice was sodden. He seemed barely aware of Jim’s
presence. It was as if he was talking to himself.“He was Quechua,” he
said. “Living on a little farm in Jujuy. There is no employment in that part of
the country, no future for the young people. When the boys are old enough, they
go to work in the mines of Bolivia. And the girls become maids in Salta. Or
whores.”

It sounded as if Don
wanted to get the story off his chest, but was afraid of saying too much. There
was a nervous furtiveness in his eyes.

“It broke my heart to think what was
in store for Asu. I wanted to get her out of this hopeless situation. When the
old man saw I took an interest in her, he said: ‘You like the girl? She’s ready
to go to work.’ ‘I already have a maid,’ I said. He smiled. He had a mouth full
of stumpy teeth, yellow with decay. ‘You tell her what to do,’ he said. ‘She’s
a very good girl. You take her for two hundred dollars.’ I saw what he was
getting at, what kind of work he had in mind for her. I played along. We
started haggling. I got him down to fifty dollars, which was all I had on me.
It was a fortune for a man like him.”

“And that was that?” Jim said. “Fifty
dollars, and she was yours?”

Don nodded and went
on. It was a story that wanted out.

“Now here is the part
that hurts,” he said. “I took Asu back with me to Catamarca. I sent her to a
good school. I gave her every chance to realize her dreams.But, no: just before graduation, she drops
out and runs off with a gas station attendant.” He paused, as if to reconsider
his role in Asu’s life, then shrugged his shoulders. “And that was the last I
heard of her. She didn’t bother to stay in touch with me. After all I’d done
for her!”

“And Lisa reminds you of her?” Jim
said.

“Well, I can’t put my
finger on it, but Asu had the same craziness in her eyes. Those Indios live in
a world of their own, you know, a world of magic and superstition. Lisa has the
same take on things. She talks about signs -- good signs, bad signs. She checks
her horoscope. She jots down her dreams. She’s looking for direction from above.”

Was that the point of
Don’s story? That Lisa was superstitious? Was this about Lisa? Jim didn’t think
so. Don’s sweaty excitement raised a flag. He was holding something in reserve.

“History has a way of
repeating itself,” he said grandly, starting to cover his tracks. “I am afraid
Lisa will make the same mistake and fall for an unsuitable type. You heard her
mention Santos?”

“He is an ‘unsuitable
type’?”

“A shady character. A
drug dealer if you ask me.I’ve told
Lisa to stay away from him, but I really shouldn’t get involved. When it comes
to women, I tell myself: Careful, old man, don’t look, don’t talk, don’t
listen.”

He can’t fool me, Jim
thought, I’ve seen the way he looks at Lisa. He’s on a mission. He wants his
daughter back, but he’ll take Lisa in a pinch...

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About Me

I was born in Vienna and obtained a doctorate from the University of Toronto. I am the author of more than a dozen non-fiction books (social history, biography, translation), three novels (Playing Naomi, 2009, Head Games,2013, and The Effects of Isolation on the Brain, forthcoming) as well as a novella, Unspeakable (download from smashwords). I divide my time between Toronto and Los Angeles, and have lived in villages in Argentina, Romania, and Bulgaria. Want to know more about me? Follow me on Twitter @historycracks. Visit my website:
http://www.erikarummel.com/